So insert obligatory (for me) caveats of everything here being just notional and not meant to dictate any plotline, let alone stomp over other’s ideas. When writing my Donal story (Easing Back in for Session 28 - #3 by Dave), I crystallized some ideas I had, and extrapolations from them, and so want to ramble about them here. (I will also try to keep clear of the New Queen, the Phoenix Sovereign stuff (The Next Ten Sessions) – almost entirely.)
Consider:
- The Realm of Rozinande
- The Dancing Forest
- New Thule
Those Damned Elves!
A big part of this will be about perspective. You have Rozinande (and its Dancing Forest territory). We’ve established that they are … insular. Outsiders are not welcome.
- Is this racism? (For that matter, what does being an “elf” actually mean, especially in a world of multiple races / species / kin? What sets them apart aside from trope-ish physiognomy?)
- Is this “just” xenophobia? (And is that driven by irrational fear of outsiders … or have outsiders been a very real threat in the past and are still seen as such? Or all of the above?)
The Elves and the Archmagus
Has it ever been established that the Archmagus ever controlled the elves? Was that control as absolute as what the Empire did in other lands? Or was it more along the lines of “The Empire can destroy you at any time … don’t give me reason to”? Or did they successfully resist the AM – at the cost of blood and strength over a long, long time? Any of those could explain that insularity (both rational and emotional)
Maybe the racism / xenophobia isn’t one-sided. Who knows what the Archmagus might have spread as propaganda about the elves, to justify the Empire’s conflict against them? What might the AM have said (or even believed) about their threat to the Empire and its people?
For that matter, is it possible they were (or were seen as) an actual threat, either directly, or as not going along with whatever the AM’s grand purpose for the Empire was (see below))?
Maybe there are no white hats in this tale.
Are the Elonians are still fighting, at some level, that same conflict, for good reasons or bad (“The Elonian Empire Has Always Been At War With Rozinande”) – inevitably further justifying elvish defensiveness and isolation?
Yeah, I’m asking more question here than suggestions. Consider the questions as suggestions – I can see any of these working in a story.
The Enemy from the North
Here’s another rationale for Rozinande not welcoming outsiders and refugees: not just fear of them, but of the conditions that drove them. Look at the map. There are frosty areas shown along Rozinande’s northern shoreline, coming close to Fletz, the capital.
Is there a real, present threat (or a mystically foreseen threat) to the elves from whatever is causing the northern icecaps to expand? Have lands already been lost? Would a nation, already under pressure from such ill fortune, welcome in outsiders fleeing the same disaster?
And, faced with an unwelcoming border, would people interpret that as “oh, those racist elves,” without wondering what sort of pressures and threats they, in turn, were facing – political, social, economic, and, significantly right now, environmental (with fear of them becoming existential)?
A few more thoughts about Rozinande
So I see Roznande proper as the lands to the north of the Dancing Forest. Any elvish trope will do. The Forest is also home to elves … but also an active barrier against assault by land from the south and the sea from the east. Not to go all Huorn or anything, but if we posit some natural affinity between the elves and the land and its flora and fauna, then the Dancing Forest – the trees seem to move, you know – becomes a first line of defense (and another reason for outside hostility back at the elves).
I don’t want this to be bigly dark. I see this overall story as bright, but with shadows threatening them. A lot of those shadows may be misunderstandings and misinterpretations and old conflicts remembered by new generations without any context from the past. There may be actual black hats, but my sense here is that actual tyrants and villains are a lot more rare than people think – it’s just that they tend to be charismatic and (at least in the short term) successful.
And, again, the Archmagus
I extend that perspective even to the Archmagus.
What we know of the AM is shrouded in generations of storytelling since the fall of the Empire, and probably hella stories passed down over time from during the Empire. The mad wizard-king, Saruman successful in his conquest, is certainly a legitimate trope – but so is Klaus Wulfenbach, the Lawful (if not necessarily Lawful Evil) type who takes control as it was the only way order can be maintained – especially unifying all peoples against threats nobody else may know anything about.
Everyone thinks they are a hero in their own story – the AM might have had to drink themselves to a stupor every night to forget the short-term evils they were “forced” to do for what appeared to them as the justified long-term benefit. They may have been willing to be hated in order to save the world. (Or they might have just been a crazy power-mad asshole. Or both.)
To tie that back around to the above, maybe the AM saw that only by tapping power sources from across an Empire could the march of the glaciers from the north be held back – which is why things up there have gone to frozen shit since the fall of the AM.
And if there were resources to that end in Rozinande, the Empire might have targeted them. And if they were necessary to whatever magical kingdom the elves have built, they would have resisted. And now everyone hates the insular, xenophobic, racist, selfish elves, who in turn hate the conquest-happy, destructive, existential threat from everyone outside their borders, be they neighbors, hostile imperial-wannabes, or refugees.
To Sum Up
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The elves may have been victims or targets of the Archmagus, in degree ranging from conquest to armed conflict to simple “stay in your borders” threats. Any of those would produce a reaction of resentment and insularity for Rozinande. Contemporary conflicts (with the Elonians, with once-mentioned aggression from the Axe Coast, or even with unknown menace from lands to the west) might be continuing that xenophobia.
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The land of Rozinande may (also) be “under attack” from the same radical global cooling and arctic ice pack expansion that took out Lost Thule and is taking out Near Daran (including Trishenko). That may be leading to their inhospitality to outsiders coming in (fear of stretching decreasing resources, and/or fear of that weakness becoming known). Fine to give refugees from Lost Thule some inhospitable areas to Ronzande’s far east, but beyond that limited area they feel they cannot be asked to do more.
All of this potentially feeds into the political pressures that Bill raised in his discussion of the new Queen. Leaving out all other factors, when there is a perceived (and, in some cases, real) threat from outside, in the past and certainly in the present, political pressure mounts, people take action out of fear, then desperation, and big fantasy trilogies get written.
Net-net, I’m not suggesting we don’t track down Lixana, or try to catch up with the squirrelkin Rose and Jenny Tarot (et al.) – those are all logical and interesting next steps. But I can see eventually dealing with Rozinande and its people and what they face and what they intend to do as being key to resolving some of the deep, underlying mysteries and plots around this world we’ve crafted.